Anonymous says its members should be free to DDOS websites as they please. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Anonymous calls Paypal "corrupt" for refusing to support Wikileaks and cooperating with the FBI in arresting members associated with the attacks. (Source: Furious Fanboys)

Anonymous takes credit for an eBay stock drop, failing to recognize that the drop was due to a poor earnings report. (Source: Crescent State Bank)

Group claims drop was due to its boycott of "corrupt" Paypal, says DDOS attacks are not illegal

The hacker group Anonymous has yet again struck out at eBay Inc. (EBAY) subsidiary Paypal.

I. "It's My Party, and I Can DDOS if I Want to"

The large group of international hackers [1][2][3] and internet enthusiasts has been at odds with the e-payment service ever since last year, when it severed funding to Wikileaks citing violations of the terms of service, which forbid funding to be used in support of criminal activity.

Anonymous responded with distributed denial of service attacks. Its thousands of members directed their Low Orbit Ion Cannon (LOIC) programs to spam Paypal's servers with requests, which succeeded in temporarily slowing or crashing Paypal's services.

Now Anonymous and its daughter organization LulzSec [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] are calling jointly for a boycott of all Paypal services in response to the arrests. The organization writes:

Many of the already-apprehended Anons are being charged with taking part in DDoS attacks against corrupt and greedy organizations, such as PayPal.

What the FBI needs to learn is that there is a vast difference between adding one's voice to a chorus and digital sit-in with Low Orbit Ion Cannon, and controlling a large botnet of infected computers. And yet both of these are punishable with exactly the same fine and sentence....Quite simply, we, the people, are disgusted with these injustices. We will not sit down and let ourselves be trampled upon by any corporation or government. We are not scared of you, and that is something for you to be scared of. We are not the terrorists here: you are.

In short, Anonymous is arguing that distributed denial of service (DDOS) using the LOIC is a protest, not a cyber attack, and people should be free to DDOS with LOIC as they please (even if it disrupts businesses). Of course they'd likely feel a bit different about the superior DDOS application XerXes, which was employed by a hactivist calling himself th3j35t3r ("The Jester") to take down Anonymous's beloved Wikileaks last year.

The group suggested that they could drop the stock to as low as $20 per share -- a fall of almost a third.

However, such claims seem opportunistic and unrealistic, given that eBay just reported disappointing earnings. While the earnings showed strong growth, earnings per share fell a cent short of the average analyst prediction, leading to the stock decline.

As of yesterday Anonymous was crowing about "tens of thousands" of Paypal accounts being deactivated. If this is accurate, Paypal should hardly be concerned -- it has over 100 million accounts. Of course, thanks to the convenient timing of the stock right after an earnings report, Anonymous can claim credit for the drop.

Surprisingly some news sites, such as NeoWin even believed the rhetoric. The site, apparently oblivious of the earnings disappointment, wrote:

The boycott can be linked with a stock crash of their parent company Ebay which has already dropped ~3%. It’s expected that it will fall even more as more and more people follow the actions of others and deactivate their accounts.

If there's one thing Anonymous may have legitimately done, it's overloading Paypal's account deactivation page. As of yesterday the page was down, though deactivations were proceeding via the service's phone line -- +1-888-221-1161.

This is understandable, though, as the service likely only experiences a small number of deactivations on any given day.

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This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

A DDoS protest is not inherently evil. However a DDoS attack can definitely be done with evil intent.

Most of those ranting about the response to DDoS events are upset because the police and the targets don't think its a lot of harmless fun. Most of the screaming is from those who think that because the individual screamer agrees with the protest the protesters should be immune from reaction by their targets & law enforcement.

If you or others want to start DDoS attacks as Civil Disobedience, then it is also necessary to realize that Civil Disobedience results in enforcement of the laws forbidding the action, unless the law in question is repealed. Real Civil Obedience protesters understand this and so accept jail time as part of their protest.

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